Boiled mashed potatoes for miracle satiety?

This is an interesting study. Given a meal of meatballs plus a choice of five different carbohydrate sources, a group of children ate a great deal less (in calories) of boiled mashed potatoes than of pasta, rice or either of two types of chips.

"... children consumed 30–40% less calories at meals with BMP (p less than 0.0001) compared with all other treatments, which were similar".

That's a LOT less calories! Potatoes seem to have some sort of magical satiety property. If you believe in magic. Table 1 gives an inkling of the problems with the study:

As you read through the cooking description you realise (red box) that the carbohydrates had very different amounts of added fat per unit carbohydrate and that some had butter (+/- added milk) while others had canola oil in varying doses. So when we look at Table 3 we have to realise that "CHO amount (g)" means an assorted mix of various fats and carbs:

We have to work back using Table 1 to find out what amounts of carbohydrate and fat were actually eaten and read the cooking details to find out what the fats were in each dish. Some arithmetic gives us this for what was actually eaten:

To my mind the trial here splits in to two. We have BMP, boiled mashed potatoes with 3g of carbohydrate per gram of butter, which is fairly well matched with FFF, chips deep fried in canola oil, with 2g of carbohydrate per gram of canola oil. Both are potatoes. Both provide a roughly similar ratio of calories/grams from glucose and fat. Both are relatively low carbohydrate per unit fat (compared to the other three meals, ie just in this study).

From the Protons point of view the relatively low carb BMP and FFF are supplying glucose from potatoes to drive complex I. However butter also supplies FADH2 at ETFdh, so generates a resistance within adipocytes (and elsewhere) to an excessive insulin facilitated calorie ingress during the period of maximal blood nutrient levels. When calories stop falling in to adipocytes, satiety kicks in. Using FADH2 this happens after eating 508 kcal. With FFF based on canola oil, ie potatoes steeped in 18 carbon omega 3 and 6 PUFA, the beta oxidation generates a much lower input at ETFdh (one less FADH2 per double bond) and so insulin sensitivity at peak nutrient uptake is maintained for longer, fat pours in to adipocytes for longer and almost twice as many calories are consumed (912 kcal) before satiety kicks in. I expect satiety to rise as blood nutrients rise. Not sequestering them in to adipocytes seems the best way to do this. More physiological insulin resistance. I'm guessing the brain does the actual sensing of both glucose and FFAs.

I like that. You can say what you like about the hypothalamus. I prefer to think about the adipocytes and their mitochondria as determining what gets done with food and hunger. There is some input from leptin of course, but that's another post.

The other three carbohydrate dishes are essentially lowish fat foods with between 7g and 10g of carbohydrate per gram of butter or canola oil.

In these lower fat preparations it takes three or four teaspoons of butter to generate satiety vs just under 6 teaspoons of canola oil, roughly twice as much fat is needed when carried with a similar amount of starch. A reasonable fit with a Protons point of view, though not as pleasing as the BMP vs FFF comparison.

How the study was developed is fascinating to think about.

What decisions were made at the planning stage? Obviously, someone had worked out, well before any grant application was submitted, that higher saturated fat with lower carb meals are by far the most satiating. Or maybe they are dumb and they were just lucky to get a result? Personally, I can't see how you engineer a study like this unless you are pretty clever and well informed, not at the mitochondrial level of course, but certainly at the butter level. Mashed potatoes, which already have something of a reputation as a miracle weight loss food, getting a helping hand... From a dollop of butter. It makes sense.

BTW this is Canada. I can't see how such a study would ever have gotten past any ethics review committee in the US of A. Imagine trying to feed BUTTER to American children. Immoral. Plus they might not eat up their carbs!

I really did learn in grade-school that an experiment needs to have only one variable. I don't get it - why do papers like this get published? Being a scientist is different than having a degree - starts with knowing the 'scientific method'.

There is a second point about carb diet research - the idea that the satiety belongs to the meal at hand is missing the big picture.

My experience (I've seen other write about it ) is that eating a fair amount of carbs at a meal induces much greater appetite at the next meal - the next meal would be when I would tend to over-eat. But they were not looking for truth anyway...

karl, the other thing I've seen is that the trigs/FFAs post meal are heavily influenced by the previous meal, a big chunk of fat sits in the GI tract tissues and gets shoved in to the circulation by the next meal... Southampton uni did the work methinks.

I love butter and your posts Peter! Not completely related but your thoughts on whether there is any veracity of K2 supplementation to assist D3 in keeping calcium where it should be and not where it shouldn't be?

You might want to go read the stuff over at free the animal. To focus on the small amounts of fat as a factor is what they call 'majoring in the minors'. Wake up- LCHF has been attempted by many but many have stalled and adding in potatoes has done wonders.

They said "... were queried about their habitual diet using a Food Frequency Questionnaire," and of course no citation to the research that shows this type of research does not work..

Then there is the total miss in thinking - perhaps fat people NEED insulin resistance to lose weight? They want to eliminate that and make them fatter?

So I imagine a phone call "Hey mom I published a paper with that expensive degree you bought me! They let me pretend to be a scientist! I'm so cool! .... What?? - You think you should get your money back as they didn't teach me the scientific method? You don't understand - I got published in a peer reviewed journal! - There is no need for any boring science philosophy... Didn't you see the selfie I sent you? I was wearing a lab coat!... What do you mean science is more than that? You are so old fashioned... "

Random question, but it seems to me that SFA + CHO [at high levels] = inflammation. MUFA + CHO doesn't. I think you talked about this in one of your articles. I think high SFA diet is best, but lets say after ingestion of 300g of CHO, for several days following, any consumption of SFA = inflammation [or some metabolic issue].

Is this because CHO is still being digested and steadily flowing into blood stream, or because of replete glycogen stores? Or maybe CHO ingestion alters something mechanistically and it takes a few days to readapt to fat? I just can't figure out why the inflammation effect persists so long.

I was looking at grams CHO to grams butter, and I think it worked out to like 2 medium sized potatoes and 1-1.5 tbsp butter.

Yeah, the inflam. seems significantly worse from sugar than just starch. Definitely got the metabolic syndrome as well :(. I'm assuming the solution is LCHF lol.

So, super insulin resistant is what leads to non-suppressible fatty acids, as a result of overfull fat cells or something? Hyperglycemia b.c FFA's impair glucose uptake? I've been trying to figure that one out as well.

I think mitochondrial dysfunction produces a pathological signal which mimics physiological insulin resistance when it is not appropriate. I think the first few cogs of the ETC is where this happens but would be a very clever person if I knew why. It will come to what controls mitochondrial DNA repair/replication and the mtDNA copy number me thinks. But I dunno.

@Peter Re: Mitochondrial dysfunction - I'm wondering if anti-ox might produce a local MT evolutionary bottleneck. There are a lot additions to our food sources to keep stored food fresh that could do the job. If these additions reduce ROS - the population size of MT should go down?

There is one more effect that people knew about at one time but seem to have forgotten.

Wurtman ( the husband) did the papers that showed the high carb diets increase serotonin - the safety/comfort neurotransmitter. There is a real reason that comfort foods - comfort people. The problem is it has an addiction potential - post synaptic serotonin receptors down regulate. This discovery led to the development of the SSRI drugs - which in some age groups the majority of the population are taking. ( Imagine a drug - that if you stop taking you feel worse - people making $$$ - not opiates - but SSRIs - legal exploitation )

Anyway, you can see that potatoes are sort of a poor-mans SSRI - and the down-regulation of serotonin receptors creates a likely addiction system. Short term SSRI(and potatoes?) reduce appetite - (my hunch before the down-regulation occurs) - but fails long term.

My take is if I could eat potatoes and have my post-prandial BG staying below 110 I wouldn't worry - but I can't - my hunch is that the consumption of LA is likely breaking the insulin/BG/adipose endocrine system of the public and most people should think very carefully about what elevated BG from a high potato diet might do to their long term health.

I'm really not trying to be particularly disagreeable and as I mentioned in my post, one way to take this is that adding a couple or few extra hundred calories via added fat like butter or cream will work too...or hell, a fried, boiled or poached egg on top. Just don't maybe go butter gone wild or "Bulletproof Potato" in combination with high carb. More and more, it seems to me that LCHF and HCLF are a yin-yang sort of deal where that's the proper tradeoff balance in play. One or the other, not HCHF. Protein is a relative constant, 15-30% typically.

I'm not particularly interested to a level of fanatical devotion to understanding all the particulars. I really have to lay my trust in Peter to do his best sorting it all out, as he seems willing, able, and enthusiastic to do. Division of Labor. I prefer to report what people are telling me in my little blog-comment lab and have the fortune of being able to induce lots of people to experiment such that there are enough anecdotes that one gets a real sense of what might be going on in practice.

In terms of the underlying mechanisms (Denise's post and Peter's take on it are interesting, BTW, exactly the sort of stuff that move everyone forward, towards being less wrong, as I like to say) what I did find is that some of the people—and this is great because it adds to the trustworthy weight of going by self-reported anecdote—report crazy hunger on plain, no-added-fat boiled potatoes even eating lots and lots (most people do no, many most I would say).

This got me thinking of John Sarno, of all things, a doc pretty legendary for getting people to get over various back, neck, shoulder pain, etc. The pain is real, but once he shows them there's no real injury and for whatever reason, their brains are simply restricting oxygen to muslcle tissue and causing real pain, but they are not indeed importantly injured, they compartmentalize that, pain goes away over time. I did it myself with a small cervical herniation with chronic pain over many months.

Anyway, here's the post that came out of that and by damn, some are reporting that it helped get over "irrational hunger," which I think of the brain demanding ice cream or pizza, giving you knawing hunger, when you are indeed well fed and nourished.

My concern is for the 13% that while trying to get into carbosis - instead might get harmed...

(really read http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2015/10/protons-and-ultra-low-fat-once-more.html see the bits about the 13%. I would at least be checking post-prandial BG )

I know people that have rapidly lost weight and greatly improved their health on the potato bit - Sure hope people don't try doing it long term - there isn't that much protein - some could lose muscle mass - sort of important. Some fat is also important.. Don't forget about that 13%..

My hunch is that LA is the real problem - low-carb might only cover up the damage - is it reservable? ( half life of LA in adipose tissue is about 2-years ). If we hadn't started eating LA in ever increasing amounts I wonder if we would even be talking about low-carb diets.. I remember 1960 - very few obese people then.. I could be wrong - have been before. At least I know it unlike most of the diet 'experts'. As you say "Being a little less wrong every day is where it's at."

The graphs here should at least get people to stop and think - https://wiki.xtronics.com/index.php/Health_effects_of_different_fatty_acids#Consumption_of_.CF.89-6_and_seed_oil_over_time

These correlations are not enough - but other bits are falling into place.

I for one, in conjunction with my "peasant diet" other than about three dinners per week (pollack chowder and garlic bread tonight) have just plain stopped using oils, eating anything deep fried, or using any sauces and dips, including mayo. Zero. A little butter or modest bacon fat.

It's making a rapid difference. Astoundingly so.

On the issue of protein, I think it's likely over recommended. Coincidentally, I have been looking into that and popped this up on Facebook earlier today.

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So my recent experiments with a predominately high-carb diet (potatoes, legumes, oats), low fat, low protein (basically, whole food, small animal portions, no protein or fat supplementation like oils and added fats, or powders). WHOLE FOOD. Like for real, not pretend. OMNIVOROUS. Like reasonable, not carnivorous or showing off how much lard I can "tub."

Anyway, I was wondering about protein as that seems to be a common objection. Well, isn't it interesting that human breast milk is only about 5% protein, and that fuels tremendous growth in the first two years of life.

Poking around further, I came across a couple of studies.

1. Leiter LA, Marliss EB. Survival during fasting may depend on fat as well as protein stores. JAMA 1982;248:2306 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9273834)

The gist is that in 1981, 10 IRA prisoners went on a hunger strike to the death, and died from about 60-75 days of no food. They lost about 40% of body weight.

However, what's more interesting is that of their tissue loss, they lost about 94% of their fat stores, but only 19% of protein stores as estimated by researchers.

I think it's safe to say that if you get enough food and particularly if even a small fraction is animals (meat, fish, eggs, organs, shellfish) that I doubt you have any concern about protein, whether you are a high carber or low carber.

As for me? I adore my "peasant diet" for all but 3-4 meals per week. Simple.

Peter,I see you are a vet. Do you think thses findings may have applicabilty to dogs? I have a plumb bull terrier that I am trying to thin down by boosting the protein and fibre while reducing the calories in his food. It is working except his is still hungry a good part of the time and pestering me for additional food or attempting to steal food from the other dod. Would boiled mashed potato increase his satiety too.? Your thoughts would be appreciated.

My wife brought up a good comment about this study, which is that our kids would eat very little or no mashed potatoes (or baked fries) but would eat rice, pasta, or french fries, and that's regardless of how palatable you made the mashed potatoes. We've tried to get them eat "fauxtatoes", which are cauliflowers cooked, mashed, and with a lot of butter and sour cream (to me, they're delicious), and they simply refuse to do so. On the other hand, you give them rice, pasta, or french fries, and they'll eat them (although even french fries they might not eat much of). Our kids are younger than the kids in the study, though.

Over the few years since toying with this potato thing I've had a few commenters tell me their dogs love potatoes and go nuts at the site of them. Lots of the canned foods have bits of potato, carrot, peas. I've never fed mine just boiled chopped up taters though. I have four test subjects. Three rat terriers and a beagle. We're headed off the the vacation home with all four in a bit for 10 days. Perhaps I'll give it a try.

Funny, your two comments reminded of back in the Paleo and LC alliance days when the common enemy at the gates was vegans.

They used to post comments about how their kids hated meat and spit it out. This was met by lots of folks posting YouTubes of their kids chewing down on ribs & brisket.

So I suppose now, to restore yin-yang balance to the universe, I have to post a YouTube of kids burying face in mashed potatoes...unless you figure such a thing doesn't exist. Myself, I can't remember either loving or hating mashed potatoes...all I know is my mom caught me eating a stick of butter, once. Does that warrant a lifetime membership in the hyper-lipid cool kid club, or what? I do know that I love both butter and mashed potatoes some 53 years later.

...Or, how about videos and memes of kids rejecting the teet, juxtaposed with the boy you've all seen, with a look of amazed wonder on his face, captioned, "Are Those For Me?"

Then perhaps we can get back to the point where it's generally taken for granted that the likes and dislikes of children and infants aren't to be taken at a cognitive level and that's why they reside with adults for guidance and learning.

Ray, they are actually quite nutritious. But it's not really fair. Since processed fat has nearly zero vitamin or mineral and beef, for example, is roughly 50% kcal fat, then ounce for once, a potato rivals a steak.

I did the graphs. People can quibble, that's fine. But a potato ought not be dismissed as a bag of glucose.

In terms of eating processed far, butter is better. It's about 15% more nutritionally dense than coconut oil (the milk solids), which is to say that ounce for ounce, butter has 15% less calories and infinitely more vitamin and mineral nutrition than coconut oil, since the latter has close to zero.

"Folks are thinking about spuds. I'm thinking about electron transporting flavoprotein. Methinks we lack a common language."

C'mon, Peter. Like I told you in Facebook, It's your post, man. You're complaining because people find interest?

Let's just be honest and I'll do the gut spilling. You recall the Inuit deal, with the genetic fucked deal, right? That was only part of a thing on my blog and Mike Eades was primarily involved.

Long story short, the two of us got over it a long time ago. We've met face to face a few times, I stayed overnight at his place, and Bea and I rubbed shoulders with him a couple of weeks ago at a Mark Sisson party.

But Mike and I are good sports. So I think he sent you this study out of curiosity and when you dealt with it, he was happy to let me know.

I suppose you're caught in the middle of two gentlemen who like each other's company and correspondence, which goes far beyond diet.

Petro - They don't get the big picture - not sure everyone wants to learn about what you have written.

It brings up a problem - posting about junk papers - in a way is important - yet perhaps it only lets the crap float on top. I find it interesting in that it is so bad - so far from science - a symptom of cultural decline. The signal-to-noise-ratio in published papers is poor - and not a whole lot better than the blogosphere. (There are even fake papers published by design funded by our government to specifically mislead - and some so-called scientists that are OK with it - how to you trust anything else they publish?).

Others seem to find this junk paper interesting in that it supports the potato stuff that is currently a fad diet among some Hollywood folks.

This potato bit started with a guy named Ray that studied as a chemist, used to work for NASA, messed with areo-gells (something I had a common interest in), did a zero-G gig, swimming pool technology, messed with using cold exposure to lose weight (not sure he gets the full brown-fat part) and then on to the potato diet - which really it is not - it is a vegan diet that has short potato periods. He got some 'connected' people to try it - and some have success.

Ray seems like a smart guy, but he probably should read Petro's bit on carbosis and this epidemiological work as well:

Now he is a "Diet Expert" what ever that means - yet he doesn't seem to be aware of the problems Petro pointed out in this quote:"... Insulin usage: 13% were f*cked. 29% derived no benefit. 58% achieved carbosis."

Now I'm a guy that got hurt following advise of experts that didn't know the limits of what they knew. It was silly to listen to advice of PSAs pushing PUFAs and carbs. There is real potential that real people can get hurt following internet diet advise. Yes, some people might come out ahead - yet others might get hurt. Have your eyes wide open.

@Folks The paper he reviewed - as he pointed out - is crap - I hope it does not inspire people to do things that might hurt them.

@Richard Nikoley

Protein matters - ask weight lifters. One of the common things that kill people in latter life is getting stuck in a chair or bed due to lack of muscle. Strength matters.

One can 'live' longer on a semi-starvation diet - if you call that living - weak and tired, depressed - makes me think of the cranky vegans I've known.. ( is it a cause or effect?) - I would rather be living while I'm alive.

There was another diet - some remember the Fen-Phen days - people really lost weight rapidly - and some ended up with heart damage. I've never been totally convinced that it was the direct effect of the drug - I've wondered if the modulation of appetite caused too much reduction of protein - while the body was already catabolizing rapidly - and people lost key bits of their hearts. There are other people that think extremely rapid weight loss is bad - I don't know - don't think it has been shown either way. We have evolved to survive fasting - that does not mean it is healthy in the extreme. Not something that sounds like 'fun' either.

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." - Mark Twain

"I think mitochondrial dysfunction produces a pathological signal which mimics physiological insulin resistance when it is not appropriate. I think the first few cogs of the ETC is where this happens but would be a very clever person if I knew why. It will come to what controls mitochondrial DNA repair/replication and the mtDNA copy number me thinks. But I dunno."

I think I get it, but am kinda confused about the concept of insulin resistance. I've heard you say that you "resist insulin". Does this mean that by eating a high SFA diet, you are avoiding an insulin response most of the time, or that SFA creates a state of insulin resistance, or both?

So what's supposed to happen is that, running metabolism on SFA's most of the time, insulin is avoided, but then when carbs are eaten, insulin is supposed to kick in and suppress FFA's, but this doesn't work in the case of someone who has the mitochondrial dysfunction aka metabolic syndrome?

So you have high levels of FFA's that aren't being suppressed by insulin b.c mitochondrial dysfunction, plus SFA and Carbs from the diet? Also, why does sucrose exacerbate the issue, or is that a separate issue entirely? Fructose?

Also, I've been reading lately that animal protein is linked to diabetes over vegetable protein. Do you think this is because animal protein is more insulinogenic, or just that higher animal protein is more likely to be correlated with a western diet? Or maybe that the animal protein we most commonly eat is skewed amino acid ratio-wise because too much muscle protein, not enough glycine? Srry for all the questions, just trying to get them down on here as its stuff I've been wondering about. Anyone feel free to answer.

Yes. Why the FFAs fail to suppress is an interesting question. Adipocyte size is one but mitochondrial dysfunction is probably another. Fructose enters glycolysis w/o regulation. My presumption is that it normally causes sufficient insulin resistance to reduce glucose entry (which is regulated) in about the amount needed to balance the fructose. Problems kick in when there is so little glucose in the diet that this isn't practical. That's what I mean when I suggest very high sat fat diets are not very tolerant of fructose...

Interesting. So not such much an inherently harmful property of the fructose, but a tolerance issue, although I've read some stuff about it being inherently harmful as well. It's interesting to me that high SFA diet has amazing results health-wise, but also kind of reduces dietary flexibility. Probably not as extreme for metabolically healthy people though.

As far as the animal protein insulin thing, I found this study:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24658997], where high fat, high sucrose induced obesity in ratswas prevented by scallop protein intake, and worsened in varying degrees by other protein intakes.

Forgot that query. The thought of preventing obesity on a high fat high sucrose diet is insanity. We have a diet which supplies irresistible calories. Having them fall in to adipocytes is a hell of a lot better than have them fall in to other cell types. Metabolic syndrome starts when fat cells can get no fatter. The only answer is to avoid the food components which side step the normal regulatory processes. Fructose (depending on the glucose intake) and PUFA...

Ok cool. So you think the fact that the rats didn't develop obesity is actually worse because of damage from sucrose to other cells. I've seen wooo mention that estrogen protects against metabolic syndrome (by facilitating more fat gain?).

I think it's interesting that the longest lived mammal, the bowhead whale, also has the most blubber of any whale, making it the heaviest whale relative to size. Same goes for the kakapo, the longest lived bird, which is the only land bird that can store body fat for energy, making it the heaviest parrot (mentioned this on Edward's blog as well). Bowhead whales have a lipid rich diet, but the kakapo eats berries, so the fat storage might be metabolically protective because it spares other cells the sucrose exposure, or maybe it just means the parrot is burning fat for energy a higher percentage of the time than other birds.

"The only answer is to avoid the food components which side step the normal regulatory processes. Fructose (depending on the glucose intake) and PUFA..."

So once inappropriate insulin resistance has been established through overfat cells, PUFA and Fructose become problematic in the context of FFA's that can't be suppressed. Once IR has been re-established through weight loss, those foods become less problematic, assuming there is no permanent mitochondrial dysfunction, except in the case of a very high SFA, low glucose diet, where there isn't adequate adaptation to allow fructose to be handled effectively. Very high SFA diet is effective in that it minimizes damage from "irresistible calories", while still providing adequate calories for functioning, and provides some of the same benefits of the calorie restricted state that would naturally arise if we didn't live in a place where calories are always available.

Yeah the biggest hangups for me were the PUFA and sugar, and how they are harmful. Thanks for taking the time to explain all of this.

I'm really wondering about the effects of storage additives to the ROS signal..

@ Rattus

I don't think you can draw those conclusions from that scallop paper - it is the same mass of confounding variables once again. To do this research correctly, they would have to identify the proteins and THEN test them one at a time. ( There are different oils and other bits that confound this into sort of a mess). It isn't your fault - the title of the paper is misleading - I don't think it should not have been published with that title.

Now if they took pure substances and showed the same effect it would be different - but they didn't.

Now taurine is not considered an 'essential' amino acid - unlike cats - humans can synthesis it - but there are some hints that some dietary amount might be helpful. Really needs more study as a single substance. I've wondered if vegans may be effected by the lack of it in their diets(their blood levels have been shown to be down about 20%+). (I became a bit interested in taurine when I was looking at homocysteine problems - Taurine is a derived from cysteine - and taurine seems to lower it ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19239173 )). When people go on crash-diets what happens to their Taurine levels? Could it mess with their hearts?

The bigger question is if too much protein might be bad - and just what constitutes "too much" and is it only some proteins (that contain particular amino-acids?).

There are essential amino acids - used to be 8 - now they say 9 - and eggs seem to have all of them covered (could be we have been robbing nests for a long time?) .

My links got mushed - the taurine paper:Effect of taurine treatment on insulin secretion and action, and on serum lipid levels in overweight men with a genetic predisposition for type II diabetes mellitus

The paper is from an article I read about glycine. I was trying to synthesize the title, not draw my own conclusions [don't really have the understanding to do that]. I've just read a lot of different stuff in the blogosphere about different proteins being handled by the body differently, as well as looking at a lot of "blue zone" populations and seeing that their animal protein intake is low relative to their vegetable protein intake. Meat is usually not a daily affair for them. I don't know if this fact changes in light of a high SFA, low CHO diet.

Also have seen a lot of people looking at the connective tissue/muscle protein [glycine/methionine] ratio and how it is skewed somewhat in the modern diet, relative to what it might have been in traditional cultures who butchered their own animals. Whether there is any validity to this stuff scientifically I'm not sure, but I definitely notice that a lot of steak/eggs/etc gives me issues. Eating a lot of fat with the meat, or choosing fatty cuts of meat, probably mitigates a lot of the potential dangers.

Late but this entry was fantastic. I loled hard at the 72gram (i assume TOTAL carbs, and potatoes are very high fiber) potatoes with tons of butter being compared to more carb laden monstrosities. Duh.

Actually, while on the topic, when did potatoes become equal to rice and flour? They arectually are not terribly high carb you know, more similar to maybe corn or beans. To be honest i'm not *surprised* many people find potatoes filling especially if their prior diet is junk/crap and sugar and floury foods. A single tato has like 20 carbs; for background thats a tiny teeny fraction of the calories and carbohydrate a typical person otehrwise needs. People on the tato hack are actually going into KETOSIS, which is probably the real reason they lose their appetites (ppl who are fat/over their setpoint weight/not very wt reduced often lose appetite in ketosis). They go into ketosis because they are in huge calorie deficits and potatoes really arent that high carb , at least not compared to the shit crap they eat usually.

Add some BUTTER to the low carb tatoes and well, yea. You now have a stupidly designed low carb diet. I say "stupid" because any reasonable person would make sure to get their calories in the form of sardines, eggs, liver, and very nutrient dense foods. No, potato geniuses instead choose to basically semi starve on water logged root turds with like, terrible quality protein and meaningless energy from starch. Good job guys.

Sigh people keep trying to reinvent the wheel.

Look, PSMF already has been done, and it's much more reasonable/sane when you follow the rule to eat minimum protein to avoid lean tissue catabolism while doing your 50% cal deficit.

Also, it should be noted, the tato hack fails miserably for some people. I suggest that is true when the person is paricularly glucose fubar (i.e. they really need a very low carb diet because of IR so bad even 50 carbs of tato fuck them up)... or alternatively, they are weight reduced/leptin broken and these stupid keto/fasting hacks fail terribly in those patients.

...Correction. Actual carbohydrate is around 250-350, at 3-4 pounds of taters, 1300-1900 kcal. I and others can tell you that it's VERY difficult to eat 4 pounds (I haven't), no matter how you fix them, and butter isn't going to help much except to unnecessarily increase calories while doing squat in terms of micronutrients.

"Look, PSMF already has been done, and it's much more reasonable/sane when you follow the rule to eat minimum protein to avoid lean tissue catabolism while doing your 50% cal deficit."

In 1981, before Woo was born, 10 IRA prisoners went on hunger strike, died in the range of 60-75 days later. They were studied. On average, they had lost about 95% of fat stores, but only 19% of lean stores. Humans are lean sparing machines. You die when you run out of fat, not protein.

All of this hand-wringing over protein quality and quantity over the 3-7 days people typically engage in a potato hack is what's really LOL.

Beyond the red herring of protein sparing I already addressed, it is nonetheless interesting to compare the potato hack to a PSMF. While I've done a bunch of nutritional comparisons with potatoes, whole meals with lots of potatoes, big meat meals and big fat meals (the latter is by far for worse from a micro standpoint, since fat has almost no vitamins or minerals...butter is "magarineally" (ha ha) best, 'cause the solids), it's true there's a commonality of approach:

1. significant caloric deficit

2. very low fat

I did that for perhaps two weeks in 2008, using Lyle McDonald's book. Results were not as good as the 1-2, 24-30 hr water fasts per week I was doing at the time. And it was way harder. It's crazy difficult to get high protein and very low fat (under 10%, I think was the deal) if you're going to eat food and not drink fat-free protein powder in water. As I recall, it was mostly egg whites and 96% lean ground beef, which is less palatable to me than a plain boiled potato with some malt vinegar.

I think everyone can agree that both a potato hack and PSMF are effective for a lot of people, but given the requirements for low fat, the potato is a cinch, since that element is built right in and you have to go to no more trouble than you do to make a cup of tea.

In terms of micronutrients, I was quite surprised how the potato stacks up (see charts here: https://freetheanimal.com/2016/02/the-potato-diet-practicalities-dropping-big-weight-fast-with-high-energy-and-without-hunger.html ) against meat. Of course, meat suitably repurposed for a PSMF would have more micros than a standard comparison, since you're trading off near zero-micro fat for micro-rich lean.

But, all of these hacks, just like plain old fasting, are intended to be short-term intermittent interventions for most people, so it probably ought just come down to what works best for any individual. Unlike many weighing in, I _have_ actually tried them all and find the potato hack by far the most effortless and easy to do. I boil a pot of potatoes, with skins, pop them in the fridge. Peel like a boiled egg when hungry and eat one, two, or three. Over the space of a few days, they do tend to completely modify hunger and satiation signals.

Leena, in america potatoes are usually much smaller than 300 grams. Thats almost a pound.

No normal person eats an almost 11 ounce potato. If someone is eating that much potato they are probably also just binging on food madly at restaurant or they are on a weird potato diet.

Yes, an average size potato is quite low carb and they do not deserve repuation as being very high carb foods. You can eat al ot of carbs in potato... if you eat almost a pound, and as Nikoley pointed out, you still only end up with 50 carbs. 11 ounces of potato, still only 50 carbs.

Now compare PASTA, OR ANY OTHER flour based food: 83 net carbs in 11 ounces of typically cooked pasta.

Thats almost twice as many carbs for a similar weight of food. And i would mention that this is only "two serving sizes" of pasta, i.e. 4 ounces dry weight, and MOST ppl will easily inhale way more pasta than that.

OTOH, 11 ounces of potato = 50 carbs and most people are NOT going to eat that much. They will eat toppings, leave inside/skin etc.

Yes, potatoes really are not nearly as carby as most truly high carb processed foods and TBH i think a big reason it works is you are excluding starches/flour based things , it's like a poorly designed/deficiency prone very mild low carb diet. Ironically.

And we should not forget the "powdered food effect" of flour based foods (pastry, cake, pasta, bread etc.). While nobody really acknowledged or followed up on that intriguing result, I'm quite convinced that the effect is real and important. http://www.gnolls.org/3409/the-calorie-paradox-did-four-rice-chex-make-america-fat-part-ii-of-there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-calorie/

Potatoes are indeed moderately carby. When comparing to other veggies it has at the same weight the same carb content than green peas for example (ok one could argue then that peas are high carb, but your get the idea).

I can certainly get on board with defending the tater on the basis of not being as carby as some assume and indeed, it's a whole not processed food (boiled, baked, roasted...chips and crisps gets into trouble perhaps).

A 300g tater isn't that uncommon. Large baking potato and most of the weight is water. Plus, if you bake them, cool, then reheat you substantially increase the RS so lower net carbs even more, get some colon butyrate action going, etc.

I found that I actually enjoy a big baked potato more with just about a tsp each of butter and sour cream poked into the thing. Some salt. I eat most of that first and will end up eating 4-6 oz of a steak rather that 8 - 12. My German immigrant dad who survived on taters after WWII has been doing the same thing and happily shedding pounds at 78.

Thanks, woo. That is how remembered american potatoes to be but that was some decades ago. Yet I thought that things could have changed as they did with people, who also were much lighter then.

To Richard: We do not have 300g potatoes anywhere, and the 100g potatoes that I've occasionally tasted have lost all the real taste, too. Never mind, I don't mind at all sticking to these older and tastier tiny varieties, as long as they are available on market squeare. Besides, eating low fat and high carb is not an option for me. Been there, and each revisit (it still happens, but rarely) comes with itches and fatique.

I live on butter, animal fats, broths and cheese. So far they are my only way to keep the biggest organ (skin) in shape. After 40 years of low fat & high carb with plenty of potatoes and grains the non-itcy, healed skin is a blessing that I never ever even dreamt of. And the bliss has naw continued for over 15 years, so I have actually nothing to complain.

Not sure what the argument is. Nobody is constrained by the skin of a potato. Not borders and culture. We have small golds, Yukon and otherwise, and they make for excellent roasting potatoes. They might be 25 g each. One slices them in half, tosses in a bit of fat of choice (a good reason to preserve bacon fat), roasts at 400F for 30 minutes and if skilled, does a beef stock reduction (perhaps with garlic, shallot and mushroom...mashed and strained). One eats many of them, sopping up the concentrated stock reduction, thickened if one desires. A potato starch slurry is good for that. Probably better than corn starch.

Or, one could get a Winnemucca baking potato, which can be upwards of a pound and a half in a single spud. One does not eat many of those in a sitting and one is advised to go easy on the added fat, else one might get an unwanted and unecessary calorie bomb.

Well I'm glad that there are some tasty potatoes on your side of Atlantic, too. It is too bad that nutritional science publications coming my country are no better than this article, but I'll do my best to cope with the reality.

As for the argument? It is not important. IF you really were lost on the article itself (where the amount of carbohydrate and fat calories made the primary difference, and that after that it was modified a little with fat quality) then... oh, just don't worry, be happy, you are still ok with your taters.

Fruit is a rich source of potassium, dietary fibre, antioxidants, and various other potentially active compounds, and contains little sodium or fat and relatively few calories. The study found that fruit consumption (which was mainly apples or oranges) was strongly associated with many other factors, such as education, lower blood pressure, lower blood glucose, and not smoking. But, after allowing for what was known of these and other factors, a 100g portion of fruit per day was associated with about one-third less cardiovascular mortality and the association was similar across different study areas and in both men and women.

Study author Dr Huaidong Du, University of Oxford, UK, said "The association between fruit consumption and cardiovascular risk seems to be stronger in China, where many still eat little fruit, than in high-income countries where daily consumption of fruit is more common." Also, fruit in China is almost exclusively consumed raw, whereas much of the fruit in high-income countries is processed, and many previous studies combined fresh and processed fruit.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1501451Fresh Fruit Consumption and Major Cardiovascular Disease in China

CONCLUSIONSAmong Chinese adults, a higher level of fruit consumption was associated with lower blood pressure and blood glucose levels and, largely independent of these and other d

Fruit is a rich source of potassium, dietary fibre, antioxidants, and various other potentially active compounds, and contains little sodium or fat and relatively few calories. The study found that fruit consumption (which was mainly apples or oranges) was strongly associated with many other factors, such as education, lower blood pressure, lower blood glucose, and not smoking. But, after allowing for what was known of these and other factors, a 100g portion of fruit per day was associated with about one-third less cardiovascular mortality and the association was similar across different study areas and in both men and women.

Study author Dr Huaidong Du, University of Oxford, UK, said "The association between fruit consumption and cardiovascular risk seems to be stronger in China, where many still eat little fruit, than in high-income countries where daily consumption of fruit is more common." Also, fruit in China is almost exclusively consumed raw, whereas much of the fruit in high-income countries is processed, and many previous studies combined fresh and processed fruit.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1501451Fresh Fruit Consumption and Major Cardiovascular Disease in China

CONCLUSIONSAmong Chinese adults, a higher level of fruit consumption was associated with lower blood pressure and blood glucose levels and, largely independent of these and other d

I have nothing against stone age processing of food, be that cutting, cooking, drying, salting, fermenting - or churning. Maybe it is in my genes? Old tech tricks have always been needed and used here, in order to survive winters.

The other option, transporting fresh food from the other side of the globe is a very recent innovation. It does funny things to health, ecology, politics and whatever. Fresh produce from far is inevitably ultra-modern stuff, after all the high tech (biocidical, chemical, biological and mechanical) tricks needed to keep it fresh and edible all the way to the customer. Well, we all have our dark sides...

'There are sweet as well as bitter strains of cassava, but farmers often prefer the bitter, high-cyanide ones, because they discourage insects'

Kidney beans are a whole food-https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytohaemagglutinin

Castor beans are a whole food. Etcetcetc

Very few unprepared animal foods will poison you. Preparation? We probably wouldn't have ever evolved to have big brains and small guts if we hadn't learned to do at least some of the mastication and digestion externally, via tools and technology.

I get what you are saying, and yes, I think that you are technically correct in what you are saying, but, having said that, isn't it true that even after the cassava has been processed to remove the cyanide, that, as far as I understand it, the cassava still contains most, if not all, of the nutrients that it had before being processed?

Now, compare that to butter which is one result of milk being stripped of many of it's nutrients.

Butter is no big deal, a red herring if you'll pardon the expression, and the French style cultured butters have additional nutrients. But you can get nearly all you need from simple animal foods and not have to concern yourself with plant toxins and allergens. In my (nut free) workplace i have to be aware of many children who can have anaphyllactic reactions to legumes and other vegetable protein sources but I have not yet discovered one who might have a life threatening reaction to fresh lamb chops.

Butter has a limited nutrient content. Sure. But does everything we eat have to be rich in nutrients?We evolved eating foods rich in anti-nutrients like phytates and oxalate. Our ancestors may have had to eat lots of these to survive at those times when animal foods were scarce. These are still considered healthfoods today. Some vitamins (looking at you biotin) have such a high affinity for apoenzymes that deficiency is practically unheard of even on refined diets.I frequent pyridoxine toxicity forums where some people sensitive to B6 (due to exposure to supplementation or supplemented foods) can now have their neuropathy triggered by certain wholefoods rich in B6.I reckon that if you want an advantage from butter, or coconut oil (and there pretty certainly are these advantages overall) the odds are that you can afford the limited nutrition resulting.Are we talking about using these foods "in moderation"?Well let me ask you - when was the last time you heard anyone recommend that you eat "too much" of a food?

No, every food we eat does not have to be rich in nutrients. I agree with you.

However, the more nutrient-poor foods a person eats relative to these foods’ energy contents, the harder it becomes for that individual’s body to obtain an optimal level and array of nutrients over a medium to long-term basis without that person really having to try and work at it.

So, if we have a person who is consuming daily, lets say, an average of 800 calories of butter out of their daily allotment of, lets say, an average of 2000 calories, then that individual needs to become more vigilant in attempting to make their other food sources more nutrient rich in order to ensure that their body’s nutrient status does not end up becoming sub-par over time, or, that they get fat by trying to make up the nutrient deficit by consistently going over their 2000 calorie daily allotment, or both.

So, what I am saying (and I believe it is what Richard was implying), is that it is a very good thing to be mindful of, that a food like butter can quickly unbalance a person’s medium to long term nutrient status if they are not careful, and that it may indeed be prudent to try and use a food like butter as a small accompaniment to a meal rather than one of the meal’s stars, and certainly not for butter to become the actual star of a meal itself.

In relation to whole foods, I am not saying that they are the only foods a person should eat, but, just that it becomes harder for the body to maintain optimal nutrient status over the medium to longer-term the less often that they are eaten. Now, of course, someone can become nutrient overloaded and/or unbalanced by eating too much of a particular whole food. I am not saying otherwise. A nutrient rich food is a good thing to consume (and to continue to consume) until it possibly becomes a bad thing. Balance of a number of foods is key, just like what has been done, and is still being done, in many successful and long-term healthy cultures throughout our planet over the past few thousand years or so.

You said "a food like butter can quickly unbalance a person’s medium to long term nutrient status if they are not careful". This is an exaggeration at best but most likely, false.

[Aside: quality of the butter varies considerably - are you talking about the dreary greyish-white or the bright-yellow kind from grass-fed cows?]

- First, if one is not eating a nutrient dense diet overall, that is a problem in & of itself. It probably is not caused by the fact that someone is eating 'a lot of butter'. I've yet to come across a single person or case study where nutrient deficiency or obesity occurred (as per your 'making up the difference' suggestion) by butter displacing nutrient dense food. Have you? If so, please do share.- Second, butter is not pizza - it is self-limiting. Have you tried making a meal (not just a snack) of butter alone? I'm guessing not. Nor do I know of any sane person who has.

Your thought experiment does not have a leg to stand on in my opinion.

Yes Raphi, I shouldn't have said "can quickly unbalance a person’s medium to long term nutrient status if they are not careful". I should have said instead "could possibly unbalance a person’s medium to long term nutrient status if they are not careful”, as I am speculating and I certainly do not know. But, surely mine and others speculation regarding this point should at least be considered, even if it does turn out to be wrong. Also, I will start using the terms “micronutrient” and “macro nutrient as Passthecream has mentioned that fat is, of course, a nutrient.

I am talking about high-quality butter by the way, but, the only reason I used butter as the example is because Richard had mentioned it in his previous post. I could have included, and will now, lard, beef and lamb tallow, and coconut oil, as being other foods that high-fat dieters may and often do include in their diets. All these foods have a limited micronutrient profile relative to their energy content.

Raphi, some people have, and are, reporting that they have become sick on a high-fat diet. As to why, well, I don’t know, but it is surely logical to look at micronutrient imbalance as one possible reason that this is happening in at least some cases (although I suspect the number one reason is probably simply that these people are not getting an adequate level of carbohydrate in their diets).

You said – “First, if one is not eating a nutrient dense diet overall, that is a problem in & of itself. It probably is not caused by the fact that someone is eating 'a lot of butter'. I've yet to come across a single person or case study where nutrient deficiency or obesity occurred (as per your 'making up the difference' suggestion) by butter displacing nutrient dense food. Have you? If so, please do share.”

Raphi, have you come across high-fat dieters who are struggling with their health and who may be feeling worse off since they went onto a high-fat diet? Have you found out what their bodys’ nutrient status’ are? Are you involved on a clinical basis with them? Are you a research scientist who has investigated nutrient status’ in people who are struggling on high-fat diets? If you have experience with this, then I will take on board what you have found out and do my best to have an open mind as to what results you have found.

Regarding me, no, I have not come across studies that confirm nutrient imbalances amongst struggling high-fat dieters and I don’t know any high-fat dieters full stop. Having said that,I haven’t looked yet. That is something I plan to look into.You said – “Second, butter is not pizza - it is self-limiting. Have you tried making a meal (not just a snack) of butter alone? I'm guessing not. Nor do I know of any sane person who has.”

Well, there are people who consume fats such as butter, lard, tallow etc. and, there are people who make these fats the star of their dinner plate. They are the keto-dieters, and, by definition, they have to have meals that, on average, consist of approx. 80% of their calories in the form of fat.

In the end, this all probably gets back to the issue of what are humans, in general, naturally evolved to eat? What is the sweet spot for fat calorie percentage? Maybe humans are evolved to get a quite significant amount of their calories from fat, and still maintain an optimal micro nutrient profile. However, I am extremely confident that long-term ketogenic diets are not natural. I am not saying that you believe in keto diets. I don’t know what your view is of them.

Possible micronutrient deficiency and imbalance issues surely should be at least investigated I believe.

My post ended rather more abruptly yest as I was about to run out of internet time, and I had to rush it toward the end of my post.

What I want to add is that I am not against high-fat diets, and even keto diets, full stop. I understand that in the end we have to do what works best for our individual bodies. What I am against is how high-fat diets, and especially keto diets, have been pushed by some in the past as being the first port-of-call for a fat person to go to in order to lose weight.

If I remember correctly, I think Woo has said in the past that, for example, keto is not for everyone except for those who really need to be on such a diet (I apologise Woo if I have mistakenly put words into your mouth, but this is my recall of the gist of what Woo has stated in the past). If someone needs to be on keto, or feels that this kind of diet is the only option that works (at least to some degree), then they should indeed be on a keto diet. Individual needs must come first. What I don't like is high-fat diets, and especially keto diets, being pushed by some people as being the only diet worth pursuing by an overweight individual (and I am not saying that you think this way raphi, but some people have in the past done this).

About Me

I am Petro Dobromylskyj, always known as Peter. I'm a vet, trained at the RVC, London University. I was fortunate enough to intercalate a BSc degree in physiology in to my veterinary degree. I was even more fortunate to study under Patrick Wall at UCH, who set me on course to become a veterinary anaesthetist, mostly working on acute pain control. That led to the Certificate then Diploma in Veterinary Anaesthesia and enough publications to allow me to enter the European College of Veterinary Anaesthesia and Analgesia as a de facto founding member. Anaesthesia teaches you a lot. Basic science is combined with the occasional need to act rapidly. Wrong decisions can reward you with catastrophe in seconds. Thinking is mandatory.
I stumbled on to nutrition completely by accident. Once you have been taught to think, it's hard to stop. I think about lots of things. These are some of them.

Organisation (or lack of it)!

The "labels" function on this blog has been used to function as an index and I've tended to group similar subjects together by using labels starting with identical text. If they're numbered within a similar label, start with (1). The archive is predominantly to show the posts I've put up in the last month, if people want to keep track of recent goings on. I might change it to the previous week if I ever get to time to put up enough posts in a week to justify it. That seems to be the best I can do within the limits of this blogging software!